Former Chernobyl miners reflect on the 1986 tragedy

Former miners Vladimir Naumov and Andrey Nasonov who tried to contain the radioactive leak at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in April 1986 — after one of the reactors exploded — have reflected on the disaster. More than 400 miners from Donbas, in southeast Ukraine, and Tula, almost 200 kilometres south of Moscow, were drafted to tunnel under the failed reactor and install a heat exchanger to try and cool the core. One in four has since died of cancers or radiation-related disease. By the time the miners were drafted in, the first responder firefighters had put the fire out, but the molten core was in danger of melting through the concrete pad on which it sat and threatened to seep into the water table, risking potentially 50 million lives. When asked whether he ever questioned the sacrifices made, Mr Naumov said: 'Who else but us? Me and my fellow workers were brought up that way. Not that we went there to die, we went there to save lives.'

from World | Daily Telegraph http://bit.ly/2Z2SOG8